When America was founded our borders were open to anyone that moved here and kept out of trouble for five years.If that was good enough for George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and ….

That was essentially the standard until 1921, when we tied immigration to the 1910 census. The 1910 census documented the ethnic background of Americans; many in Congress were worried that our ethnicity was changing too rapidly and with too many of the wrong people. Think: Italians, Greeks, swarthy people. (Yes, “swarthy people” was considered a definition of ethnicity back then. This law, amended in 1924, remained in place until 1965.